


Mosaic

by SuluSparkles



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix It Fic, I swear, M/M, Q is not dead, but they need to talk about the rejection, queliot, sorta at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26743231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuluSparkles/pseuds/SuluSparkles
Summary: This is sorta a fix it fic. I have not seen season5. It does not exist to me. But! This is post season 4 and post Q's revival which totally happened. Quentin and Eliot get together when Quentin comes back to life, but Quentin is still having complicated feelings about the rejection. Eliot shows him how much he loves him in the best way he can manage.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	Mosaic

Quentin walked slowly to the door of his and Eliot’s shared bedroom. The door seemed to loom taller than it actually was as he approached the dark wood. He reached out for the handle and opened it carefully. 

Eliot was already there. He looks up when Quentin enters, surprised even though he had been expecting him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands restless as he had been waiting for his boyfriend to enter. There was a moment of silence as Quentin closed the door behind him. 

“What did you want to talk about?” Eliot asked first, trying to swallow the lump that was trapped in his throat; his Adam's apple bobbed as he failed. 

“I…” Quentin wouldn’t look at Eliot as he tried to voice the thought that had been plaguing him for weeks now. “When did you stop loving me?” He finally manages, looking up at Eliot. 

Eliot sputtered, completely baffled by the question, the sincerity in the smaller man’s voice felt like a hand squeezing all the air out of his lungs. He looked at Quentin for a moment longer before his gaze dropped back to his ever-fidgeting hands. 

“Quentin, darling, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Quentin scoffs, shaking his head as if frustrated. He doesn’t speak at first, knowing that if he wasn’t careful this might end worse than he wanted it to. 

“Eliot, I get it, okay? After the Mosaic we had a choice. I made mine and you made a different one and that’s okay.” Quentin says, his voice trembling. He had rehearsed this talk so many times in his head just to stop his voice from shaking, but it was getting to him all the same. 

“Yeah, Q, I did, but it was the wrong one. When I was stuck in-” 

“When you were stuck in the Happy Place, you did some thinking. I know Eliot. You told me that already, but…But you had also come back to me being dead.” Quentin’s voice was steadier now. Eliot couldn’t look at him and he wouldn’t stop fidgeting with his hands. Quentin watched them for a moment before he started again. 

“Like I said Eliot, I get it. It’s the same reason Alice still wants to be with me. When we remembered everything, the Mosaic, being married...I suggested that we try it here too and you said that we don’t work, not if we had a choice. That makes sense. Alice feels like she doesn’t have a choice. She drives everyone else away and she thinks I’m the only person who will keep coming back to her.

“And you. You think I saved your life. I didn’t save your life. I got myself killed. Now...Now you have the idea in your head that this is the way it has to be. That you don’t have a choice and...Eliot I get it, okay? I mean if I had a choice-” 

“Q, Please don’t say that.” Eliot begged Quentin, finally forcing his eyes to look at him. He licked his lips as his heart pleaded with him to say something, to say anything, to make up for how he had hurt this man who had done so much for him.

“Why not? If you felt you had the choice, if Alice felt she had the choice, you would leave. I mean think about it Eliot. I forced Alice to come back to me. I trapped her and brought her back after she died. Julia never hesitated to leave me when I was accepted and she wasn’t. Penny never liked me to begin with. I could go on.”

“Please don’t.” Eliot says softly, all the moisture gone from his mouth. “None of that was your fault.”

“You don’t get it, Eliot. I’m not angry. I’m not even really sad anymore. Like I said it makes sense. I make you guys braver, stronger, or whatever the next person is going to tell me. It’s not because of anything I do. It’s because I’m pitiful. It’s easy to feel bad for me and it’s even easier to use me as a reason to fight. I’m broken and broken things give people something to fix.

“When my dad was a kid he used to build little model planes with his dad. He showed me his favorite once. It was broken into pieces. He told me he had kept it this whole time, meaning to fix it, but the thing is, El, he never did. Because sometimes you just can’t.” 

“You’re not a plane, Quentin.” 

“You’re right, I’m not because with one small mending spell, I fixed that plane.” Quentin looks away from Eliot, lost for a moment in the memory of his father, of the small white plane and the look on his father’s face when he had fixed it for him. It was one of the few things he would never regret. 

“I’m not a plane because nothing’s going to fix me. Not Alice, not Julia, and not you.” Quentin closes his eyes for a moment, his face twisting in that way it does when he’s trying so hard not to cry. “So you can tell me what I did, what made you convinced that if you had the choice you wouldn’t choose me.” 

“I...I don’t know, Q.” Eliot felt as if he could barely breathe. He wanted so bad to show Quentin how much he really loved him, but it was clearly far too late for that. He had already hurt Quentin so much. He didn’t have the words in him to say sorry. 

Quentin’s face twisted in pain at Eliot’s words. For Eliot not to know what made him stop loving Quentin was the worst possibility to him, because if he didn’t know that meant that it was just Quentin. Quentin Coldwater really did just break things like his mother always told him.   
Quentin stood up. He couldn’t be there anymore. He knew that if he did, he’d make it worse. He’d break whatever he had with Eliot even more, but when he moved to leave, Eliot caught his wrist. 

“There’s...There’s a spell I know. It links two minds together. It shares their...their thoughts and emotions. We can even show each other our exact memories how we remember them.” 

“That sounds like a Vulcan mind meld.” Quentin looked at Eliot in confusion. 

“Uh, sure, whatever that means.” Eliot makes a mental note to ask Margo about it later. “My point is that we could do it. We could do the spell.”

“Why?” 

“Because...” Eliot took a deep breath. He looked at Quentin. He looked at Quentin’s face, studied it even though it was half hidden by the man’s long mouse brown hair. “Because I can’t say the things I want to say to you. The things that I...I need to say to you.” 

Quentin looks away, but then nods. “Okay. We can try it.” He says softly. “What do we need?” 

“I’ll have to go get the book that has it. I stole it from a psychic that was picking on Margo a while ago.” Eliot leans over for just a second to kiss Quentin on the top of his head, a habit that he had while they were in the Mosaic and one that he had recently picked up again, but he stops himself, unsure where their relationship lay for the moment. Instead he pats Quentin on the back and slips out of the room. 

* * * * * *

It took them the better of two days to find everything they needed for the spell. They once again gathered in their small bedroom, which really for the past two days has been Eliot’s bedroom, Quentin having taken to crashing on the couch until they figured this out. They had set up a small folding table in the center of the bedroom in order to have a space to do the spell. 

“Okay, so, it looks like we each have a part to say based on our role.” Quentin says softly as he scratches some rough latin down onto a piece of scrap paper. “Since you want to be the, uh, the spell calls it the ‘Performer’, this is your part.” Quentin slides the paper over to Eliot, not looking up at the dark haired man. Quentin then holds a hand out to Eliot. 

“Yes?” Eliot says, staring at the hand, a little confused. 

“It also says we have to be touching. I thought you read the spell?” 

“I did.” Eliot tilts his head from side to side. “Well, I skimmed it.” 

Quentin can’t help but chuckle to himself as Eliot takes his hand. He knew even after this, no matter the result, it was going to be hard to forget. Eliot had never specified what he wanted to show Quentin. He was either going to come out of this with a clear idea of exactly how much Eliot loved him, or how much the man he cared about with his whole heart hated him. 

“Ready?” Quentin finally looks at Eliot. He looked almost as nervous as Quentin felt.

“Go for it.” Eliot says before he can convince himself to back out. 

Quentin starts with the opening incantation while both men perform matching Poppers with their free hand. After a moment, Quentin’s hand stills and it’s time for Eliot to do his part of the spell, he recites the latin Quentin wrote down for him, and Quentin reads his immediately after, leaving no space between their voices.   
Suddenly the bedroom was gone. They were in The Cottage, sitting on the couches across from each other. Eliot wasn’t surprised, Quentin was. 

“Quentin Coldwater, welcome to my mind.” Eliot says, smiling with uncertainty and leaning back. 

“Your mind? Your head could be anywhere in the world and you chose the Cottage at Brakebills?” Quentin furrows his brow at Eliot. 

“Well it’s not that easy. I,” he swallows a little, his adam’s apple bobbing, “spent a lot of time here while I was, y’know, possessed. Apparently your mind picks something called your ‘Happy Place’, I know corny as hell, and it’s where most of your good memories took place. This is mine.” Eliot waves a hand in a lazy gesture of dramatics. 

“And what did you want to show me?”   
T  
his was the hard part. He didn’t know what he wanted to show Quentin. He thought of the first day he saw Quentin. He thought of every moment he had looked at Quentin and fallen further in love with him. He thought of the hundreds of moments he had denied himself that love. He thought of all the times he had held Quentin. He thought of the Mosaic. 

The Mosaic would be the easiest to show. He could show him how day in and day out his feelings only grew stronger and stronger for Quentin. How worried he was when Arielle came along and his relief when Quentin found in himself the capacity to love them both. He could show him how he hadn’t been scared anymore, not with Quentin and their family in that warm and kind place. Not in their home.   
That was the easy way out. 

But it’s not what Eliot wanted to show Quentin. He didn’t want Quentin to just know the way he felt about him, he wanted Quentin to understand. He knew that for Quentin to be happy, that Quentin needed to understand. 

“Eliot?” Quentin’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. 

“Sorry. I… I think I know what I want to show you.” 

In the time it took Quentin to take another breath, they were in the throne room in Fillory. Quentin recognized the scene immediately. Another version of Eliot and himself were sitting in front of them, frozen and not looking at each other. Quentin could feel his heart twist in his chest. All he could think was how he had known it. How he had known Eliot would just reject him again. He could feel the threat of tears coming. 

And then there was a third Eliot, standing just barely in front of them. Quentin could feel Eliot tense beside him. They watched the rejection play out with this other Eliot. He watched Eliot flippantly refuse him. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” The third Eliot’s words caused Quentin to jump. His Eliot took his hand and Quentin turned his gaze towards him, but his Eliot shook his head. 

“Watch, please.” His Eliot’s voice was barely a whisper. Quentin looked back at the scene unfolding. 

“Someone good and true loves you. And he went out on a limb. And yeah, it was a little crazy, but you knew. You knew this was a moment that truly mattered and you just snuffed it out.” Eliot number 3 took a few steps towards the rejection versions of them. Quentin could see Eliot number 2 glance at Quentin number 2 as if responding to the other him’s words. 

“Q, I’m sorry.” Eliot 3 continued. “I was afraid. And when I’m afraid I run away.”   
Eliot 3 moved and knelt before Quentin 2 and pulled him into a soft kiss. Quentin couldn’t see much besides the back of Eliot’s head, but he could almost feel the ghost of the kiss, remembering exactly how Eliot’s lips felt against his, remembering exactly where Eliot would place his hand. 

“If I ever get out of here, Q,” the kiss was over now and Eliot 3 was talking again, “know when I’m braver it’s ‘cause I learned it from you.” A door opened behind the sitting Quentin and suddenly the present Quentin realized what he just watched. 

Eliot had told them all vague things about his time in the happy place. He had told them that he had to visit the memory he thought about the least, the one he had shoved the furthest to the back of his mind in order to get out, in order to let them know he was alive. This was that. This was his escape for that briefest of moments. This was the memory he refused to acknowledge, the one that hurt too much to think about, because if he thought about it, he had to think about how much he loved Quentin and how badly he had hurt him. 

“Peaches and Plums, motherfucker…” Quentin found himself mumbling. 

They were back in their bedroom a moment later, holding hands. Eliot had tears running down his face, which he was desperately trying to blink away before Quentin could notice, but of course Quentin noticed. Quentin reaches out and gently wipes the tear off of one of Eliot’s cheeks, even as the taller man refuses to look at him. 

“El... “ Quentin starts, but Eliot interrupts him. 

“I never stopped loving you. How could I? I just… I’ve spent too much time in a world that takes everything from me.” Eliot briefly thought of Mike before forcing the thought away with a deep breath. “I mean, like you said, I woke up and you had died saving me. You had died before I could say sorry, before I could explain.” His voice was shaking and he hated himself for it. 

“And then you pulled me in here and asked me when I stopped loving you. I thought I was losing you again. I realized how much I had really-”   
This time Quentin interrupts Eliot and it’s with a kiss. 

“As long as you let me, I will always love you.” His lips curl into that small, catlike, smile that Eliot loved so much. “How could I ever stop?” Eliot kisses Quentin now, placing his hand on that oh so familiar place on Quentin’s neck. All Quentin can think about in that moment is how much he missed the safety that he felt with this man’s lips over his own. All Eliot could do was question how he could have ever been afraid of this. 

“Does this mean the next step is for us to get Bonded in a proper Vulcan way?” Quentin jokes softly as the kiss ends. 

“I have no idea what that means.” Eliot lets an amused huff of air. He smiles at Quentin. “But I trust you with my life Q and I promise never to run again, so sure, whatever you want.” 

Quentin Coldwater smiles, and for once in his life, he was glad he’d decided to speak his mind about how he felt, because he knew even if he was broken, even if he was shattered into a million pieces, with Eliot, all those shards made up a beautiful Mosaic of colors.


End file.
